DOCSLIB.ORG

W. B. Yeats Easter 1916 This Poem Deals with the Dublin Rebellion Of

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
W. B. Yeats Easter 1916 This Poem Deals with the Dublin Rebellion Of W. B. Yeats Easter 1916 This poem deals with the Dublin Rebellion of Easter 1916 which is believed to have been the beginning of modern Ireland, in spite of its immediate failure. Yeats was in Dublin when it happened, and though at first he was against the violence and the bloodshed that accompanied it and he thought the sacrifice of its leaders wasteful, he sympathized with the rebels when sixteen of them were executed. In Stanza One the poet describes the previous lives of the rebels to suggest that they were average or normal citizens who sacrificed their lives for the sake of Irish independence. They were normal Irish people with "vivid faces" and he used to meet them with a nod of the head or saying polite meaningless words. However, he shared with them the love of Ireland: Be certain that they and I But lived where motely is worn The word "motely" means colourful dress which symbolizes Irish people. The stanza ends with "a terrible beauty is born" which may allude to the Birth of Hellen of Troy, Maud Gonne and Ireland because Irish independence will be accompanied by violence and bloodshed. In Stanza Two the poet mentions some of the significant rebels b eginning with "that woman" which refers to Maud Gonne, the most beautiful woman in Ireland according to Ye ats who was with the rebels; she was imprisoned in England after the rising but she escaped to Dublin in 1918. Because of her interest in Irish independence and in politics and argument, her beautiful voice became shrill. He then mentions a school master (Patrick Pearse) who was interested in poetry or in the "winged horse" of imagination: "rode our winged horse". His helper and friend (MacDunagh) was with him and he was sensitive, daring and with sweet thought. The fourth rebel to be mentioned is MacBride. He is negatively mentioned as a drunken, vainglorious (proud) lout (ruffian) because: He had done most bitter wrong To some who are near my heart MacBride and Maud Gonne were married in1902 but they were separated in 1905. This man, too, has been changed towards effecting change in Ireland; independence from England. The stanza also ends with "A terrible beauty is born" suggesting that the Rising was accompanied with violence and bloodshed like the beauty of Helen of Troy. In this stanza Yeats refers to the significant figures of the Easter Rising to suggest that all the Irish people When hearts are with one purpose only, they turn into a stone that troubles the flow of the living stream like throwing a stone into a river; it will disturb the river waters and the birds that swim in it. The image of the stone is a symbol of permanence and stability while the stream and the cloud are symbols of change. Yeats intends to say that the people of Ireland remained stagnant and afraid of change like stones. In contrast with the image of the stone and through natural imagery in Stanza Four Yeats suggests the inevitability of change. Everything in nature, the clouds, the birds, the animals, and the moor-hens change minute by minute only the stone amid them remains unchangeable. This means that nations around Ireland change while Ireland remains without change. In the last stanza Yeats ask "Was it needles death after all? The answer is, of course, evident. Yeats confirms the significance of their death when he mentions some of the rebels by name to immortalize their sacrifice for the sake of Ireland. He asserts that after Easter 1916, "a terrible beauty is born" because Irish people will continue their struggle for Irish independence. THEMES: The main theme of this poem is the Easter Rising of 1916. Yeats was against the bloodshed that accompanied this rising at the beginning but when the rebels were executed he sympathized with them as heroes who sacrificed themselves for the great Irish cause. He immortalized them in his poem. .
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Deirdre Toomey
    Margaret Ward, Maud Gonne: Ireland's joan of Arc (London: Pandora, I990) X I+ I 2II pp. Margery Brady, The Love Story of Yeats and Maud Gonne (Cork: Mercier Press, I990) I28 pp. Deirdre Toomey Margaret Ward's is the best life of Maud Gonne so far. But that is faint praise. The author has the great advantage of not being at a loss when dealing with Irish politics, and her interest in women in Irish nationalism - see her Unmanageable Revolutionaries: Women and Irish Nationalism (London: Pluto Press, 1984) - results in detailed coverage of Maud Gonne's involvement with women's groups. The biography is very well illustrated and includes a photo­ graph of the adolescent Iseult which makes the basis of Yeats's infatuation clear. The political and biographical coverage of the earlier part of Maud Gonne's life is not particularly good. Given Margaret Ward's training as a historian, it is regrettable that she presents material from both A Servant of the Queen and Autobiographies without verification. Both are vital but slippery works. Where Yeats's account of his own political career is distorted, self-serving or confused, she follows it without question. I will examine a group of misapprehensions to illustrate the problem. After the debacle of the New Irish Library, Ward states, "Yeats ... did not return to Irish political life tilll897". But Yeats was elected President of the London Young Ireland Society (a front for the Irish National Alliance and Irish Republican Brotherhood) in December 1896: he did not achieve such an important position by staying out of politics.
    [Show full text]
  • Assessed Literary Response, Practical Criticism and Situated
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by University of East Anglia digital repository Reading from nowhere: assessed literary response, Practical Criticism and situated cultural literacy Dr John Gordon, University of East Anglia Abstract School examinations of student responses to literature often present poetry blind or ‘unseen’, inviting decontextualised close reading consistent with the orientation-to- text associated with Practical Criticism (originating in the UK) and New Criticism (originating in the USA). The approach survives in the UK after curricular reforms and government have promulgated cultural literacy as foundational for learning. How is cultural literacy manifest in student responses to literature? To what extent can it be reconciled with Practical Criticism where the place of background knowledge in literary reading is negligible? This article explores their uneasy relationship in pedagogy, curricula and assessment for literary study, discussing classroom interactions in England and Northern Ireland where senior students (aged 16-17) of English Literature consider Yeats’ ‘culture-making’ poem ‘Easter, 1916’. Using methods where teachers withhold contextual information as they elicit students’ responses, the divergent responses of each class appear to arise from differing access to background knowledge according to local though superficially congruent British cultures. The author proposes ‘situated cultural literacy’ to advance the limited application of Practical Criticism in unseen tasks, acknowledge Richards’ original intent, and support the coherence of assessment with curricular arrangements invoking cultural literacy as a unifying principle. Introduction A core academic literacy practice of native-language literary study requires instantaneous close reading of previously unseen texts, presented without contextualising detail.
    [Show full text]
  • W. B. Yeats: a Life and Times
    W. B. Yeats: A Life and Times Readers should be alerted to the fact that there are some disparities of dates between the chronologies of Yeats's life in some of the books listed in the Guide to Further Reading. 1858 Irish Republican Brotherhood founded. 1865 13 June, William Butler Yeats born at Georgeville, Sandymount Avenue, in Dublin, son of John Butler Yeats and Susan Yeats (nee Pollexfen). 1867 Family moves to London (23 Fitzroy Road, Regent's Park), so that father can follow a career as a portrait painter. Brothers Robert and Jack and sister Elizabeth born here. The Fenian Rising and execution of the 'Manchester Martyrs'. 1872 Yeats spends an extended holiday with maternal grandparents at Sligo in West of Ireland. 1873 Founding of the Home Rule League. 1874 Family moves to 14 Edith Villas, West Kensington. 1876 Family moves to 8 Woodstock Road, Bedford Park, Chiswick. 1877--80 Yeats attends Godolphin School, Hammersmith, London. Holidays in Sligo. 1877 Charles Stewart Parnell chairman of the Home Rule League. 1879 Irish Land League founded by Parnell and Michael Davitt. 188~1 A decline in J. B. Yeats's income because of the Irish Land War sends the family back to Ireland (Balscadden Cottage, Howth, County Dublin), while he remains in London. 159 160 W. B. Yeats: A Critical Introduction 1881-3 Yeats attends Erasmus Smith High School, Harcourt St, Dublin 1882 Family moves to Island View, Howth. Yeats spends holidays with uncle George Pollexfen, Sligo. Writes first poems. Adolescent passion for his cousin Laura Armstrong. Phoenix Park Murders. Land League suppressed.
    [Show full text]
  • GONNE, MAUD, 1866-1953. Maud Gonne Collection, Circa 1870-1978
    GONNE, MAUD, 1866-1953. Maud Gonne collection, circa 1870-1978 Emory University Robert W. Woodruff Library Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library Atlanta, GA 30322 404-727-6887 [email protected] Descriptive Summary Creator: Gonne, Maud, 1866-1953. Title: Maud Gonne collection, circa 1870-1978 Call Number: Manuscript Collection No. 771 Extent: 2.5 linear feet (5 boxes), 1 oversized papers box (OP), and AV Masters: 0.25 linear feet (1 box) Abstract: Collection of letters, photographs and geneological material relating to Maud Gonne including primary materials collected by Professor Conrad Balliet in the course of his research, as well as audiotaped interviews conducted by him with a number of family members and acquaintances. Language: Materials entirely in English. Administrative Information Restrictions on access Unrestricted access. Terms Governing Use and Reproduction Special restrictions apply: this collection includes copies of original materials held by other repositories. These copies may not be reproduced without the permission of the owner of the originals. Related Materials in This Repository Maud Gonne and W.B. Yeats papers and W.B. Yeats collection Source Purchase, 1995, with subsequent additions. Citation [after identification of item(s)], Maud Gonne collection, Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University. Emory Libraries provides copies of its finding aids for use only in research and private study. Copies supplied may not be copied for others or otherwise distributed without prior consent of the holding repository. Maud Gonne Collection, circa 1870-1978 Manuscript Collection No. 771 Processing Processed, 1995. This finding aid may include language that is offensive or harmful.
    [Show full text]
  • YEATS and WOMEN in the Same Series
    YEATS AND WOMEN In the same series YEATS ANNUALS Nos 1, 2 Edited by Richard J. Finneran YEATS ANNUALS Nos 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 Edited by Warwick Gould Maud Gonne, c. 1900. YEATS AND WOMEN Edited by Deirdre Toomey Yeats Annual No.9 A Special Number Series Editor: Warwick Gould M © Deirdre Toomey 1992 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1992 978-0-333-53647-6 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 33-4 Alfred Place, London WCIE 7DP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First published 1992 by MACMILLAN ACADEMIC AND PROFESSIONAL LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world ISBN 978-1-349-11930-1 ISBN 978-1-349-11928-8 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-11928-8 ISSN 0278-7688 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Contents List of Abbreviations ix Editorial Board Xl Notes on the Contributors Xll List of Plates XVl Editor's Introduction XlX Acknowledgements XXll ARTICLES AND TRANSLATION 3 "Secret Communion": Yeats's Sexual Destiny JOHN HARWOOD 3 At the Feet of the Goddess: Yeats's Love Poetry and the Feminist Occult ELIZABETH BUTLER CULLINGFORD 31 Patronage and Creative Exchange: Yeats, Lady Gregory and the Economy of Indebtedness JAMES PETHICA 60 Labyrinths: Yeats and Maud Gonne DEIRDRE TOOMEY 95 "The Music of Heaven": Dorothea Hunter WARWICK GOULD 132 The Eugenics Movement in the 1930s and the Emergence of On the Boiler DAVID BRADSHAW 189 Florence Farr: Letters toW.
    [Show full text]
  • Have Faith, Watercolor Attributed to Maud Gonne
    Have faith, watercolor attributed to Maud Gonne. probably 1910-1944 MS.2020.061 https://hdl.handle.net/2345.2/MS2020-061 Archives and Manuscripts Department John J. Burns Library Boston College 140 Commonwealth Avenue Chestnut Hill 02467 library.bc.edu/burns/contact URL: http://www.bc.edu/burns Table of Contents Summary Information .................................................................................................................................... 3 Administrative Information ............................................................................................................................ 4 Biographical Note .......................................................................................................................................... 5 Scope and Contents ........................................................................................................................................ 5 Collection Inventory ....................................................................................................................................... 6 Have faith, watercolor attributed to Maud Gonne. MS.2020.061 - Page 2 - Summary Information Creator: Gonne, Maud, 1866-1953 Title: Have faith, watercolor attributed to Maud Gonne Collection Identifier: MS.2020.061 Date [inclusive]: probably 1910-1944 Physical Description 1.75 Linear Feet (1 container) Language of the English Material: Abstract: Watercolor illustration of the Virgin Mary and child, attributed to Irish revolutionary, suffragette, actress, and
    [Show full text]
  • (WILLIAM BUTLER), 1865-1939. WB Yeats Collection, 1875-1965
    YEATS, W. B. (WILLIAM BUTLER), 1865-1939. W.B. Yeats collection, 1875-1965 (bulk 1890-1939) Emory University Robert W. Woodruff Library Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library Atlanta, GA 30322 404-727-6887 [email protected] Descriptive Summary Creator: Yeats, W. B. (William Butler), 1865-1939. Title: W.B. Yeats collection, 1875-1965 (bulk 1890-1939) Call Number: Manuscript Collection No. 600 Extent: 1.75 linear feet (4 boxes), 1 oversized papers folder (OP), and 1 framed item (FR) Abstract: Collection of materials grouped together from various sources by virtue of their authorship by William Butler Yeats or their relationship to him including literary manuscripts, holograph notes in and emendations to published texts, letters, and photographs. Language: Materials entirely in English. Administrative Information Restrictions on access Unrestricted access. Terms Governing Use and Reproduction All requests subject to limitations noted in departmental policies on reproduction. Source Purchased via Tom Taylor on behalf Major R. G. Gregory at auction, 1979. Numerous additions were purchased from various rare book and manuscript dealers from 1980-2016. Custodial History Major R. G. Gregory was the grandson of Lady Augusta Gregory. Citation [after identification of item(s)], W.B. Yeats collection, Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University. Emory Libraries provides copies of its finding aids for use only in research and private study. Copies supplied may not be copied for others or otherwise distributed without prior consent of the holding repository. W.B. Yeats collection, 1875-1965 Manuscript Collection No. 600 Appraisal Note Acquired by Rose Library Director, Linda Matthews, as part of the Rose Library's holdings in Irish Literature.
    [Show full text]
  • Boston College Collection of Yeats Family Papers 1891-1964, Undated (Bulk 1900-1940) MS.1986.054
    Boston College Collection of Yeats Family Papers 1891-1964, undated (bulk 1900-1940) MS.1986.054 http://hdl.handle.net/2345.2/MS1986-054 Archives and Manuscripts Department John J. Burns Library Boston College 140 Commonwealth Avenue Chestnut Hill 02467 library.bc.edu/burns/contact URL: http://www.bc.edu/burns Table of Contents Summary Information .................................................................................................................................... 3 Administrative Information ............................................................................................................................ 4 Related Materials ........................................................................................................................................... 4 Biographical note: W. B. Yeats ..................................................................................................................... 6 Biographical note: Lily Yeats ........................................................................................................................ 7 Biographical note: Elizabeth Corbet Yeats ................................................................................................... 7 Biographical note: Jack B. Yeats .................................................................................................................. 8 Biographical note: John Butler Yeats ............................................................................................................ 8 Biographical note:
    [Show full text]
  • National Allegory and Maternal Authority in Anglo-Irish Literature
    Mother England, Mother Ireland: National Allegoryand Maternal Authority in Anglo-Irish Literature and Culture, 1880-1922 Andrea Christina Bobotis Greenville, South Carolina MA in English Literature and Language, University of Virginia, 2002 BA in English Literature and Language, Furman University, 1998 A Dissertation presented to the Graduate Faculty of the University of Virginia in Candidacy for the Degreeof Doctor of Philosophy Department of English University of Virginia May,2007 Abstract "Mother England, Mother Ireland" proposes a new way of reading allegories of nation-building and national identity in Anglo-Irish literature at the end of the nineteenth century. I argue that authors who claimed affiliations with both England and Ireland (Maud Gonne, Lady Augusta Gregory, Bram Stoker, and Oscar Wilde) exploited the capacity of allegory to infiltratea range of genres and, in doing so, discovered hidden potential in the links between motherhood and motherland. Examining nonfiction, novels, drama, speeches, and public spectacles, I show how these writers adapted allegorical representations of Ireland as a mother not only to confrontIreland's vexed political and cultural relationship with England, but also to explore cross-cultural links between Ireland and Britain's outlying colonies. ii Table of Contents Introduction: Reconsidering National Allegory 1 Rival Maternities: Maud Gonne, Queen Victoria, and the Reign of the Political Mother 20 Collaborative Motherhood in Lady Gregory's Nonfiction 62 The Princess as Artist: Mother-Daughter Relations in the Irish Allegory of Oscar Wilde's Salome 114 Technologies of the Maternalin Bram Stoker's The Lady of the Shroud 154 Bibliography 190 Endnotes 201 Introduction Reconsidering National Allegory In the late 1880s the Anglo-Irishwoman Fanny Parnellwas at the height of her popularity as an Irish nationalist poet.
    [Show full text]
  • Iseult Gonne and Yeats. Yeats Eliot Review: A
    Amanda French. "A Strangely Useless Thing": Iseult Gonne and Yeats. Yeats Eliot Review: A Journal of Criticism and Scholarship 19.2 (2002): 13-24. Unlike her more famous mother, Iseult Gonne seems actively to have sought the supporting role of muse, which is of course one reason why she has never had a biography of her own. Even with that willingness, she never gained the kind of immortality Maud Gonne did through Yeats's poetry--yet the history of Iseult's relationship with the poet is interesting. Yeats had a front-row seat for Iseult’s maturation, and evidently perceived her in several ways over the course of her life: as an archetype of the compromised innocence of childhood, as a mirror image of Maud, and as the quintessence of wasted potential. Almost all published descriptions of Iseult Gonne portray her less as a personality than as an embodiment of some abstraction, some constant companion to other, more vivid human lives. This quality of her character--or perhaps of her fate--is somehow emblematized in the story of her conception. In 1890, Maud Gonne had a son with the French journalist and agitator Lucien Millevoye. The child died a year later.1 Yeats wrote in his autobiography that "The idea came to her that the lost child might be reborn, and she had gone back to Millevoye, in the vault under the memorial chapel. A girl child was born, now two years old" (Memoirs 133). Yeats both doubted and disapproved, but to Maud Iseult at first represented the child she had lost.
    [Show full text]
  • 'Easter, 1916': Yeats's First World War Poem
    Tim Kendall chap12.tex V1 - October 4, 2006 1:50 P.M. Page 227 • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • ‘EASTER, 1916’: YEATS’S FIRST WORLD WAR POEM • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • marjorie perloff When Pearce summoned Cuchulain to his side, What stalked through the Post Office? What intellect, What calculation, number, measurement, replied? W. B. Yeats, ‘The Statues’ ‘How does the war affect you?’, wrote W. B. Yeats’s old friend and fellow occultist Florence Farr from Ceylon in October 1914. At first Yeats shrugged it off: in Ireland, he told Farr, the war seemed more remote than in England, making it easier to 1 FN:1 concentrate on other things. But in London some months later, he complained to his American friend and benefactor John Quinn that ‘[the war] is merely the most expensive outbreak of insolence and stupidity the world has ever seen, and I give it as little of my thought as I can. I went to my club this afternoon to look at 2 FN:2 the war news, but read Keats’s Lamia [sic] instead.’ This air of studied indifference characterizes Yeats’s irritable little lyric of February 1915, ‘On Being Asked for a War Poem’: I think it better that at times like these A poet’s mouth be silent, for in truth 1 Florence Farr to W. B. Yeats, 3 Oct. 1914, in Yeats Annual, ix, ed. Deirdre Toomey (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992), 242–3. Farr was then headmistress of Ramanathan College in Ceylon. 2 Yeats to John Quinn, 24 June 1915, quoted in Roy Foster, W. B. Yeats: A Life, ii: The Arch-Poet (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 5.
    [Show full text]
  • BMH.WS0317.Pdf
    ROINN COSANTA. BUREAU OF MILITARY HISTORY, 1913-21 STATEMENT BY WITNESS DOCUMENT NO. W.S. 317 Witness Madam Maud Gonne McBride, Roebuck House Clonskeagh, Co. Dublin. Identity Foundress of Inghini na hEireann; Foundation member of National. Council of Sinn Fein. Subject National (a) activities 1900-1921; (b) Work of Inghini na hEireann; (c) Formation of Cumann na nGaedheal and Sinn Fein; (d) White Cross 1918-1922. Conditions, it any, stipulated by Witness Nil File No. S.195 FormESM2 STATEMENT BY MADAM GONNE McBRIDE, ROEBUCK HOUSE, CLONSKAGH, DUBLIN. My memoirs "Servant of the Queen" cover as accurately as my memory allows tile events with which I was connected from birth, December 1866, up to my marriage with John MacBride, March 1903. A few further details about my family and my early life might be of interest: The Gonnes came from Co. Mayo, but my great-great grandfather was disinherited and sought fortune abroad trading in Spanish wine. My grandfather was head of a prosperous firm with houses in London end Oporto - he destined my father to take charge of the foreign business and had him educated abroad. My father spoke 6 languages but had little taste for business, so he got a commission in the English Army; his gift for languages secured for him diplomatic appointments in Austria, the Balkans and Russia and he was as much at home in Paris as in Dublin. My lovely English mother died when I was 4. and my sister Kathleen 2. Inconsolable, my father never remarried arid devoted much time to the 2 children.
    [Show full text]